Stem cell expert to quit official posts

S. Korean apologizes, admits ethics violation in getting human eggs

TOKYO — Hwang Woo Suk, one of the world's leading stem cell experts whose South Korean team cloned the first human embryo and created the first cloned dog, publicly apologized Thursday for ethical breaches and said he would resign from all his official posts.

Under mounting pressure from the international scientific community, Hwang, 52, admitted that his team had used eggs extracted from two of his junior female scientists during research that led to the team's historic cloning of a human embryo in 2003. Such practices are considered unethical in international scientific circles.

Choking back tears, Hwang said he had not known about the women's donations until the magazine Nature began investigating the source of his team's eggs early last year.

After discovering the truth, however, he denied the allegations out of fear that his project would be jeopardized, he said. The women had asked that their privacy be maintained, he said.

"Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research," he said.

A national hero in South Korea, Hwang has been dogged recently by international allegations of ethical impropriety that have threatened to set back his work. Last month, Hwang and several leading scientists launched the Seoul-based World Stem Cell Hub, a project aimed at seeking treatments for diseases that remain incurable.

Earlier this month, University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald Schatten said he was pulling out of his association with Hwang, citing concerns about the way the group had obtained human eggs, whose procurement is one of the more vexing obstacles to stem cell research.

The case underscores how difficult it will be to hold to internationally accepted standards in stem cell research and cloning, particularly between countries with different societal traditions.

Compatriots defend scientist

Thousands of South Koreans used the Internet and airwaves this week to defend Hwang. Many appeared baffled at why foreigners would see the donations as ethics violations. The practice of obtaining eggs from female team members is viewed overseas as off-limits because the hierarchical structure of lab research has the potential for coercion.

"Hwang had no Western educational background and, unlike the West, Korean institutions have no systematic way of reviewing, judging and clarifying research result in a step-by-step process," said Hwang Yoo Sung, president of NeoDin Medical Institute, a research lab in Seoul. He is not related to Hwang Woo Suk.

"All researchers know that they need to abide by certain ethical procedures when they launch a project, but in reality, researchers in South Korea don't feel the need to constantly contemplate these issues."

In statements to a government commission that were later made available to the media, the two women said they had made their donations in secret and under false names after Hwang had refused their offers.

At the time, the team was desperately in need of additional eggs for its work.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hwang said Thursday that he had turned them down because it might pressure other female staffers to do the same. He said he confronted the donors in May 2004 after a reporter from Nature made inquiries about the donations.

One of the women, a doctoral student researcher, admitted her statement about the donation to the magazine but then retracted it. Soon after both women told Hwang, although neither he nor the women clearly "realized it was ethically wrong at the time," he said.

After Nature's article stirred the scientific community, Hwang said he came to understand the implications. But he withheld the truth, he said, to protect his researchers from public embarrassment.

This year, Hwang's team was hailed for creating Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog. But the ethical allegations persisted. Monday, Roh Sung Il of Seoul's MizMedi Women's Hospital also admitted he had paid $1,447 each to 20 women to gather human eggs for Hwang's research.

Egg payments legal

Roh said he had not informed Hwang about the payments until recently. The payments, which ended in 2003, were not illegal in South Korea.

An investigation conducted by South Korea's Health Ministry, whose findings were also released Thursday, described the donations by Hwang's team members as neither "coerced or coaxed" and also concluded that Hwang's team committed "no violation of ethics guidelines."

But Hwang had insisted the eggs used in his research were made by donors who gave them in hope of helping his work and not for profit.

He took full responsibility for his mistakes and issued an emotional apology to the nation. Though he will continue with his research, he will step down as head of the World Stem Cell Hub as well as other government-funded scientific groups with which he is now associated.